


i wish you would've.

by astankhane



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Goodbyes, Hurt No Comfort, Phone Calls, Post-Canon, bitersweet ending, dialogue heavy near the end, eve says fuck, hurt a little bit of comfort, i do not know why im writing this, i guess afterwards is up to interpretation, i'M SAD, it's literally post 3x08 pain, neither of them die tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29506437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astankhane/pseuds/astankhane
Summary: They both walk away in the end. Villanelle calls Eve a week later to say one last goodbye.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	i wish you would've.

**Author's Note:**

> agony

They weren’t supposed to walk away. Not really.

  
If Eve was telling the truth, the only reason she didn’t run back to Villanelle on the bridge as soon as the other woman turned around was because she was afraid. Of her. Villanelle had in a sense taken the one thing she loved and cast it away willingly. Was it a test? An old telltale, “if it comes back to you it was yours all along” story?

Eve’s only regret was that the amount of time she spent mulling over these thoughts gave Villanelle the answer she thought she needed, and Eve swore she felt the whole world drop away as the younger woman turned her back once more, and faded into the night crowd.

  
**

It had been a week since then. Eve had barely managed to drag herself back home that night. She had been in a sort of limbo, in her head and in work- Carolyn had her on standby for now while MI6 tried to regroup after the fiasco with Paul. She went through her days on autopilot, not really seeing the appeal since her world returned to grey.

And it was exactly one week afterwards that her phone rang.

Eve didn’t get calls. If Carolyn wanted to reach her, she’d show up in person, unannounced. And…that’s about the only person who would want to talk to her. Niko wouldn’t want to call her (not like he could speak over the phone anyways), and anyone she considered a friend before Rome likely thought she was dead.

So when Eve fixed the device on the kitchen table with a wary stare, she genuinely wondered for the first time in that week, if something was going to differ from her day-to-day she’d been experiencing. There’s no use in being safe anymore, she guessed. Even if the person on the other line worked for the Twelve and was coming to kill her right now.

  
So, she picked up.   
  
She did not greet whoever was on the other line. It took a few moments of silence, then-

“ _Eve?_ ”

She froze. Her throat tightened up. This was either some sick joke, or she was the dumbest fucking person on earth.

“ _Eve, are you there?_ ” Villanelle tried again.

Eve wants to stay silent. Not give her the satisfaction of an answer, not after she left her, not after she walked away on that bridge after she’d-

“Where are you?” she finds herself straining out instead.

And she could almost swear she heard Villanelle smile through the speaker.

“ _You know I cannot tell you that._ ”

“I could find out.”

Eve tenses as another silence falls between them.

“ _Please do not try to._ ”  
  


“What the fuck.”

“ _Eve-_ “

“No, Villanelle, what the _fuck_?” Eve can feel her voice rising, her emotions betraying her when she never even planned to take this call in the first place.

“I spill my _heart_ out to you on that bridge and you think, oh, I have a great idea, I’m gonna take the one constant thing in my life and _walk away,_ without even _asking_ her what she _thinks_ about it, not speak to her for a _week_ , and then _call her_ and _tell her not to come looking for me!_ Do you know how stupid that sounds? Do you know-“ she chokes off as to not let the sob that’s been crawling up her throat come out.

Villanelle is silent, listening to all of this. Then,

“ _I was hurting you_.”

“ _Jesus_ , no you weren’t! _I_ was! I’d been hurting myself this entire time because I didn’t want to admit it- and I, I was finally _ready_ to accept it. I was finally done. In Rome, _I_ hurt us. I tried to run, and I told you you didn’t know what love was and I _shouldn’t_ have, and I _know_ that and I should’ve _showed_ you-“

Eve takes another deep breath. Ranting her feelings is much easier when she can’t see the pain she knows is evident on Villanelle’s face right now.

“-and I thought, maybe this time I could _try_. I could let go, and I thought- I thought maybe we were going to _stop_ walking away from each other,” she finishes lamely, knowing her voice cracked a few times and Villanelle must know at this point she’s crying.

“ _…it’s not good, Eve. You know it’s not good. You said to me, back in the ballroom, that we would consume each other. I thought it was nice. But now-_

“ _-now I don’t think I want you to be consumed, even if we are together. It would hurt less knowing you did not die because you chose me._ ” And, great, now Eve thinks Villanelle is about to cry too.

“Vil-“  
  
“ _That’s what love is, isn’t it?_ ” Villanelle continues, and tries to cover a sniffle. “ _Wanting good for the other person, even if that is not with you?_ ”

Eve sighs heavily. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“ _See?_ ” Villanelle whispers in response. “ _I do know_.”

“Villanelle-“ Eve tries again.

“ _-please do not try to find me, Eve. I am leaving, and if you try to find me I will think I did something wrong. I am trying to figure out how loving works. I don’t want to think I loved you wrong, Eve. Please._ ”

Something inside Eve stirs at that. She concedes to the silence for a few more moments. She knows she can’t promise Villanelle that. But, hearing her admit she wants to…to know how loving someone works…Eve thinks she could use a lesson as well. So she doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she thinks back to the bridge. How tired Villanelle seemed, when she said she wanted to leave the Twelve, to stop killing.

In that moment, Eve wanted everything from her. All the good and the bad, all the things the future could have held for them if she hadn’t turned around and asked Eve to _walk_.

They never had a chance at everything. 

“Would you’ve kissed me? If I’d have asked?”

Eve hears Villanelle breathing on the other side of the line. She knows she heard her.

“ _…I don’t know._ ”

  
“I wish you would’ve.”

Villanelle chuckles softly on the other end, and Eve can definitely hear the tears that have welled up her throat.

“ _I wish you would have asked_.”

The line goes dead, Eve’s world fades back to grey,

and she cries.

**Author's Note:**

> the only reason i wrote this is because i thought of the ending dialogue in the shower and decided to make myself sad.


End file.
